Editor’s Note: This is the first of a weekly column by Christopher Stipp, an online film journalist who also writes for Quick Stop Entertainment. At /Film, we love trailers and write them about them frequently, but it’s sometimes impossible to cover every trailer that comes out. Starting today, “This Week in Trailers” will be your comprehensive guide for all the trailers that have been released in the past week or two, with a special focus on trailers that we were unable to cover. Christopher has been writing about trailers and covering other aspects of the movie industry for over five years. For my money, he’s one of the best internet writers I know. I hope you guys will agree and that you’ll give him a warm /Film welcome in the comments. -David

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?Read More »

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I want to hate Tucker Max, blogger and author of the full-length memoir / ode to assholery I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, but I can’t. Not entirely. I think it’s because I know that I’m supposed to hate him. Or maybe because, despite all his self-aggrandizing storytelling and hype about his own game with women, many of his stories end up with Tucker looking like the jerk, covered in his own filth, not getting laid. If you believe the Tucker Max that exists on paper, the guy lives for the story, and I can respect that, if not comfortably.

Ironically, the fictionalized Tucker Max seen in the trailer for the movie based on Max’s anecdotes is much more genuinely and easily hatable. See for yourself after the jump. Read More »

Richard Kelly’s Darko Entertainment will produce and finance a big screen adaptation of Tucker Max‘s bestseller I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. The book is composed of short stories narrated by the author in gonzo style. The New York Times coined a genre called “fratire” in reference to the book, a response to “chicklit”, filled with hyper-masculinity and political incorrectness. Hell has remained on the New York Times bestseller list since its debut in 2006. Simon and Schuster are even scheduled to release a sequel to the book later this year.

So what is it about? Well, the feature film adaptation will be loosely based on The Austin Road Trip story. Tucker and his friends embark on an impromptu trip to celebrate his friend’s bachelor party. But when Tucker abandons his buds in pursuit of sex, he ends up being banned from the wedding, and decides to attempt to right his past wrongs.

Tucker explains why they chose Darko over 50+ other movie financiers on his blog:

We went with Darko over everyone else for many reasons, the main one being exactly what I wrote about here: They not only “got” the creative vision behind the movie, but they were basically the only company that, when I talked to them, I didn’t feel I was dealing with financiers, I felt I was talking to actual artists. They didn’t ask what “bankable” stars I was talking to, they agreed that the movie would be better without a huge name. They didn’t “suggest” ways to make it a four quadrant movie, they told me about how they had never quoted lines from a script to each other. They didn’t whine about how hard it would be to find a distributor, they talked about all the ways they could help me make the movie even better. I felt like I was talking to guys who really cared about making the best movie possible, and who knew how to do exactly that.

Bob Gosse (Niagara, Niagara) is attached to direct based on a screenplay by Max and Nils Parker. The film is currently casting and is scheduled to begin principal photography in Shreveport, LA, in the beginning of July. They have a $7 Million budget and are aiming for a Spring 2009 release. Read a sample chapter over on Barnes and Noble.